Back Page 291 Monica Drake

[MUSIC] >> Hello and welcome again to Back Page. I'm Jodi Seay and today we're visiting with Monica Drake who is a very fine writer and pretty well known around the Oregon area. She wrote a book called 'Clown Girl,' which came out, what was it 3 or 4 years ago? >> A few more than that- It was 2007 I believe. >> Ok, good book- and an Oregon Book Award finalist and she's writ- recently written this new book, a novel called 'The Stud Book.' So, it looks like this. These are bunny rabbits in case you're wondering...so welcome to the show again. >> Thank you. >> And talk to me about this book 'cause I thought you did a great job once again. >> Thank you so much. >> It's very rich writing, it's, each of the characters- very definite, and... I liked all of that 'cause they weren't all scrambled in my head, you know, and I was worried that that was going to happen. >> Right, there are kind of a lot of characters in it. It's an ensemble piece. 'Clown Girl' had a single, primary character, carried it through; this book has quite a lot of characters- I actually kind of quit counting at seven. There's seven main characters, but there are a number of secondary characters, too. It is a book that touches on ideas of, of population. It's more directly about the questions of reproduction, but reproduction inherently reaches out toward population, and for that reason it needs to be a very populated book, I think. And the question of population, and reproduction, whether to have kids or not have kids is a pretty sensitive one, and having an ensemble cast allowed me to come at that with different points of view... >> Yeah. >> ...even if, ultimately, in some ways all of them may represent my own...you know, thoughts that occur to me at different times, right? >> Yeah, yeah... >> So it kind of had to have a big cast. >> But what I liked about it was there was a woman who, right off the bat you see a woman with a newborn... >> That's right. >> ...and she's pretty sure she's killed her child right off that bat, I mean... >> [Laughing] That's right, that's right... >> I mean, she's taking some pain pills because she had a c-section and some pills tumble out of her pocket and one went in the baby's mouth... >> That's right... >> You know, uhhhh [Jody chuckles ] And when I first read that I thought, she's not gonna kill this baby right in the first chapter! But I- it made me start thinking about all of the things new mothers when, you know, you're in charge of this new little life and you've got to keep it alive, and there's no real manual about how to do that. >> No. There's no training, and nobody's watching over your shoulder -- you go home and you take it home. >> Yeah! [Laughs] >> You know, if you have your baby in a hospital, once you leave the hospital it's like, 'See you later!' >> [Chuckling] Yeah! >> Yeah. Even just getting the car seat in the car, right? There are very specific rules, but if you've never put one in before, the infant car seats take some muscle and some finag- you know, some work, and even that can start sending doubts to a new parent to say is that in the car right? Am I taking care of my baby on the drive home, you know? >> Well, the- I remember watching Oprah's show one day and they were talking about motherhood and in other cultures the mother will come and stay for like a couple of months until the new mom gets on her feet and gets the drill down pretty well. But in America, it's like mom shows up for ten days, couple of weeks, and bye-bye. >> Right. Or if at all...yeah >> If at all. And this one young woman said when she walked out of the hospital with her baby daughter in her arms, she had no family, and she realized that she alone was responsible for keeping this child alive, and she wasn't sure she could do it. You know, so... >> Yeah, yeah... >> Anyway, so that's the way the thing starts off, the story -- mmm. So- but all of these, the interplay between all of these women who've been friends for a long, long time , and one woman desperately wants to have a baby. One's like, nuh-unh, no way, I'm not having that. And then another of them, the one who's into environmentalism and ecology, gets pregnant in her forties. >> That's right...that's right... >> So- Holy cow! >> All very possible scenarios, and... [Jody laughs] You know, when the character with the child is home, um, lacking sleep, lacking supports, spilling her pills in her baby's mouth, worrying about keeping the child alive; at the same time, there are other people, some of her friends, who are envious of her for having that baby. They think she's got exactly the thing to have, what they want, right? One of her friends is very jealous, but another friend is kind of condemning. She's like, 'Ugh, babies.' And I did want to show how people have their own response, but they're not really tuning in to her stressors and anxiety, you know, so she's kind of in her own bubble of stress while people are kind of projecting their ideas about what it means to have a baby in the house on to her. >> Yeah, yeah... Well, I don't think people understand... I mean, I understand that I would not have made a good mother. >> Uh huh... >> Nor would I have made a good teacher. >> You may have made- you never know until you... >> No, no, no, really, believe me. Trust me on this one. >> Yeah, yeah... >> I'd be doing this show from behind prison bars [Monica laughs] because I would have murdered someone's child by now...But it takes a special thing, and when the baby's brand new and there's- you're so sleep deprived... >> Yes. >> ...and it's not just a matter of being tired. When you sleep is when your cells replicate and your body does its repair work, so when you can't sleep youre' not running on all cylinders. >> That's right. >> You're not just tired; you're depleted. >> And then throwing this anxiety in it all... >> Yeah. >> And I had my daughter when I was 39, and I think that kind of thing you're talking about is very- when people talk about having children older they say, 'Oh, you can still have kids at 43...' And maybe you can, but I don't know if you can not sleep at 43, right? >> Yeah. >> If you're 19 and losing some sleep, you know, we've all done that, but it's just very different, part of the calculation about when to have a baby in your life, right? Yeah, I think that's definitely true. >> So, what inspired you to write this book? >> Well, you know, this book is, um... The questions about motherhood are against a backdrop about animal populations. That's just really a backdrop for it. But quite a long time ago, when I was a lot younger, I was an in tern up at the Portland, the Oregon Zoo, and my charges, I spent my time watching the elephants grow- there were three baby elephants at the time, including Rama, who's still up there; and I also watched snow leopards. We had two snow leopards at the time. They were not breeding, the snow leopards were refusing to breed in captivity; and snow leopards are on the decline in the world and they're difficult cats to force insemination, artificial insemination, as I understand it. I'm not a zoon vet, but my understanding is it's very *** a big cat to artificially inseminate. You have to knock them out and they don't always do well with the anesthetic- there are a lot of health risks and complications and even then they don't always carry the babies to term. I thin they- science may be having better luck forcing snow leopards to mate since they days I watched at the zoo, but I don't know for sure if they are. Snow leopards are incredibly solitary creatures. They like to live alone, and they like to live alone in a range that's so big they can't even see another snow leopard; and they'll pee at the border of their territory so if another cat smells that pee they go the other way. So they're just very solitary and one thing I liked learning is that there's not even an actual word for a group of snow leopards, right, there's no word [Jody chuckles] because they don't group up in the wild and... >> Solo... >> So the snow leopards at the Oregon Zoo never did breed and I don't know what happened in the intervening years, but we have no snow leopards at the Oregon Zoo, so that paints a slightly...grim picture. But in between, after I finished my internship in animal observation as a young person. [js So your job was Sarah's job in this? [md It was similar to Sarah's jib, and then I didn't go to the zoon for 25 years; as a young person, I just didn't go. And eventually when my daughter was born, I went back to the zoon and started thinking about those days of just watching the animals and how much I- I really loved the elephants. I really loved just watching them grow, I loved watching their power dynamics, you know when the mothers would cluster together or who would sort of... Elephant cows have this interesting thing that they do where they just come up and kind of lean toward another one until that one moves away. They just sort of using their body weight to assert dominance and... >> Hmm...I've done that. [Chuckles] >> Yeah...And they have a lot of complicated lives in terms of raising their young; they don't always accept the others' young, and in a zoo habitat they kind of need to, um, live together, very, you know, enclosed area. So, I started thinking about that a lot when I took my daughter up to the zoo, and the zoo is just flooded with little children and I thought about what it means to have mostly endangered animals in relatively small enclosures, with that many human offspring sort of pressing on the glass and, you know, taking up space and running free, and it becomes a kind of model for the larger world, because with so many endangered species, the thing that is putting them at danger is human population growth, and the way we use the planet. So the zoo kind of becomes this model for human population growth because the tendency is to take your children there. So I just had a lot of thoughts going on about what it means to bring more babies into a world with 7 billion people, and there's nothing I cherish more than my own child, but I also feel al little concerned when I see just the statistics and the animals and you say 'well, how are humans going to continue reproducing in this particular paradigm? What will we do?' And so I just wanted to take those questions and give it to this group of people and let it play out for them in their lives and set it against that backdrop of the zoo. >> Wow. Well, good job. >> [Laughing] Thank you. >> I mean, really. It's just so different from 'Clown Girl' you know? I mean... You're such a good writer and it's just so... And I loved this book, but this one is, maybe it's because the characters are all so different but it's like...richer, I thought, you know? >> Thank you...thank you. >> And I thought 'Clown Girl' was really good, but I was a little bummed when I read it, you know, Baloneytown, and it was kind of... >> A little rugged? >> Yeah, it was like, ohhh... >> Yeah, she has a hard life. >> Yeah, she does have a hard life, but anyway... >> Both of these are comedies, in my mind. >> Really? >> But both have hard edges. So I've had people read both of them and some people they strike different chords, but I hope that through both of them there is an element of comedy. And with 'Clown Girl' I think I said this when I spoke to you last, but when you look at like Charlie Chaplin, you also, you often have an underdog who is struggling, and maybe he's in love with a blind flower girl, they have no money between the two of them, right? You have all these oppressive elements, but it comes out as comedy, and that was the kind of...kind of place I was looking for inspiration. I mean when I first envisioned 'Clown Girl' she was much more of a Chaplin-esque clow, but I didn't, in that style, when she wasn't in full clown wear, she was a clown to me but it didn't necessarily translate to readers; so as I revised, I bumped up the distinct clown imagery of the large shoes and the squirting daisy, and the things that say, 'clown.' But it still, I hope, still has that Chaplin-esque feeling of the underdog, sort of fighting the system with relatively small dream, saying I just want love, I just want a little...I just want to be a creative person. And with 'The Stud Book' I think there's a lot of comedy in it, but it's often and anxious comedy, and hopefully it's a comedy that, I'm going to say trembles. A Comedy that trembles against the fragility of existence. >> Hmm. 'Trembles against the fragility of existence...' >> Does that make sense? Am I getting too lofty? >> Well, bring it down a little bit. >> I think it's funny when Georgie drops the pill into her baby's mouth... >> Oh, okay... >> ...but it's also underscoring this terrible potential, right? >> Yeah.] >> I think it's funny when the character Ben has an accident in the bathroom, although he...he could do himself some serious damage... >> That was kind of funny, although, you know...[Monica laughs] >> Yeah, it's a sort of rugged scene, but I think it's funny, too, and I hope other people find some comedy in it, because we can't go in to talk about things like population and babies and just take it all so, so seriously. It is very serious, but we need to find kind of the humanity and the comedy in it, too, I think. >> You know, I was in a discussion with a woman from Salem, named Robin Morris Collin; do you know her? >> No, I don't... >> She and her husband both teach at Willamette University, and she teaches environmental law... >> Okay. >> So they wrote this three-volume encyclopedia on sustainability, which was fascinating, and I said to her, what's the one thing that could turn it all around, for all of us? You know, meaning saving the planet. >> Right. >> And I thought she would say, you know, 'ride your bicycle' or 'change out those light bulbs,' and she said, 'the education of women.' >> That's right. >> And I thought, whoa - that's exactly right. That's exactly right, you know? So, anyway, back- >> That's similar, perhaps a little bit, to that book 'Half the Sky,' and acknowledging that to a degree. >> Yeah. Well, I was thinking about Nyla in your book, in 'The Stud Book,' you know? She's so dedicated to the idea of saving the planet... >> That's right. >> ...and yet, still she's gonna produce another child. >> That's right. >> Even though she's getting on up there, you know? So, anyway...what are you doing to promote this book besides showing up here on our show? >> I, you know, I have a full-time job, I'm heading up a program down at the Pacific Northwest College of Art, it's a new writing program, so it's a little bit hard to go out of town without starting... >> You know, one of the reasons that we do this show is because promotion is expensive. Back Page is not. You know? I mean, all people have to do is get themselves here. >> That's right. >> You know? It's a wonderful opportunity to be able to talk about your work and not go broke. I think. So, call me old fashioned, but... >> Book tours are expensive, and I think the country has gotten- the people who are interested in reading in this country have gotten a little bit accustomed to having, at least, I think, as a Portlander, we get used to how many wonderful writers come through, that we might get a little bit spoiled. We'll say, oh, this famous writer is here tonight but I'm really busy or kind of tired, I think I'll skip it and catch 'em next time. Some places, I realize, I have friends who live in towns where they have one bookstore, it's a Barnes & Noble and it's closing. And I think those places probably feel the lack of authors coming through if they're interested in that. But, for my part, I'll be doing a lot of it online, and kind of regionally. >> You know, about five years ago, Anne Lamott was in town, in Portland, and I don't know why I thought I was the only one in American who loved her writing, so I just sort of dragged my feet and got there late and there were so many people in this theater that I had to sit upstairs in the balcony on the stairs, and the Fire Marshall came and said, 'No more.' Can't do it anymore. >> Right, that's great... >> You know, it was...I was just thrilled that there were so many people there, but, you know, she was wa-a-ay down there, so... >> I've had the good fortune of reading with Chuck Palahniuk, and that is so fun. The people just pack the place, I mean the temperature of the room goes up there's so many bodies cramming in. [Jody chuckles] I just did a great reading up in Bellingham with Chuck Palahniuk and Chelsea Cain. It was one of kind of a- I want to call it a series, although an intermittent series, called 'Bedtime Stories for Grownups' where everybody wears their pajamas and there are drinks involved, which always makes a reading a little more fun; so pajamas and drinks and we had these giant inflatable beach balls that we had people write parts of poetry on with pens and we mixed them up and crowdsourced a poem -- it was all pretty amazing. >> Well, that's kind of a, that's his strong suit, isn't it? I mean, hasn't he been pretty... >> He is amazing at orchestrating really fun readings, so I feel fortunate to be brought along, and Chelsea, too, is great at that. Yeah. >> So, I know people ask this of authors all the time; you finish a book and it's published and you're like this and they read it and they go, 'Great. What else you got?' >> That's right, that's right... >> So I'm gonna ask you, what are you working on now? Or are you working... >> I have another book in the works, uh, I've had to put it aside for a little while, because of getting the new BFA at PNCA up and running, and getting this one out into the world, but I intend to turn back to it, hopefully next week. I'm also working on a kind of longish short story, and an essay. So I have all three of those that I'm eager to uh... >> And so what will you do with this short story? >> I don't know, but I like the story a lot and I feel inclined to write it. You know, I might send it out. I'm rather fond of online publications these days. It's not that long ago that we always though an online was somehow lesser than a print publication, but that's really flipped around now. If a print publication doesn't have an online presence, the work has such a shorter life, right? If it's published online, you can always direct people to it. People can say 'I like this book-where can I find your work?' and you say, well, here are the links, as opposed to saying, oh, it came out in this print- this highly esteemed print publication two years ago in fall, fall issue, right? I mean, it's hard to find. So I would probably send it out to some online publications. >> You know, I've never really written short stories. We had a wonderful short story author on here a few years ago, Geronimo Tagatac- do you know him? >> No...I'll look for. >> He's in Salem. And I said, 'you know, did you ever consider turning any of these short stories into a novel? You write so well.' And he went, 'Oh, I don't know, I just never been able to write anything longer than 27 pages...' >> Right, right... >> You know, there you go... >> Right. Yeah, well you know George Saunders, talking about writers that I always though I- For a long time I thought I was the only one who liked George Saunders. I just loved the short story writer George Saunders, and now, with his latest book, he's gotten huge attention and I went down to Powell's to see him read, but I was running a little bit late and the whole floor was full and I got locked out of that one... But George Saunders has said that he, he's not really a novelist either, so much. He's written some longer work, but he seems to put his focus on short stories, too. That's his, that's his interest. >> So you began writing when? When you Mavis' age? >> No, when I was about 25, really. I...I mean I was always writing even when I was young and I did the elephant research; at the zoo I wrote a paper on infant Asian elephant development and play behavior, right, but that's a different kind of writing than this. SO I think I always enjoyed writing and I was a strong writer in the ways that one needs to write through college, but I wasn't actually writing, thinking of writing as a profession until I'd been out of my undergraduate years or some time. >> And you mother's a writer... >> My mother's a writer, yes, Barbara Drake, poet and essayist and some other things. >> Yeah, I remember we had her on the show a few years ago and she, but in the process of getting her here she and I had that e-mail back-and-forth and she was telling me about these sheep that would follow her everywhere, even if you were walking backwards. {Jody laughs] >> Oh, how funny... >> That's what I thought, anyways... Because she and her husband live out in the country somewhere, so... >> That's right. >> Now, talk to me ab- >> I just want to say my father's actually a writer, too. >> Yeah? >> He's sort of dropped out of the scene a little bit, so people don't hear about his work as much, unless you are into automotive history. These days he's primarily an automotive historian, and he has a lot of very specialized knowledge about the history of cars and motorcycles. He's surprised me a number of times by being able to look at an old black and white photo of a car and say, 'Oh that's Larry so-and-so's car. It's got this...' and he'll tell you all the detail about how it's been altered, customized as they say. But he used to write literary work. He was in Best American Short Stories back in some year like 1969 or '72, I'm not really sure, but an early Best American Short Stories, and he... >> Is he here? >> He is, he's from Lents, he grew up in Lents, and he...he's listed among Oregon's top 100 novels, I think it's for a book called 'One Summer.' He wrote a book called 'One Summer.' You know what I'm talking about, that Oregon literary listing of Oregon's top 100 novels. It was something that was put out a few years ago, but he made that list. >> Wow. >> So he has a literary history, but that's not what he does now -- he writes for hot rodders, who tend to not be the largest reading, um, demographic, but that's his interest... >> Yeah. But still there's so much about our country and out culture that's wrapped around cars, you know? So... >> That's right. That's his big thing. So he's a writer, too. >> I'm thinking about how can we get him... >> You should try. He's pretty interesting... >> Yeah, it would be a fun talk, you know, 'cause I like cars... >> If you can get him talking, you can get a lot of information, yeah. >> So, talk to me about your program at the College of Art, Pacific Northwest College of Art. >> Yes. >> You created this new program so people can get a Bachelor of Fine Arts, in Literature. >> Yes- no, not in literature, in writing. >> Oh, okay. >> It's a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing. It will have some literature classes involved, you know, as part of the study, but it's actually a studio course. It's a program that's designed to parallel the art courses; to treat writing as an art. Part of creating the program is asserting that writing really is an art, it's a studio art, just like any other art, it just has a different presentation in the end and different tools. But it is an interesting program because it's interwoven with the other majors at the school, and as the convention has historically gone in art schools, all students share a common foundation; and that foundation offers what has been determine to give artists a well-rounded approach to making their creative work, which is drawing, basic design, knowledge of art history...as we go forward I hope to develop that out, art history, to encompass literary history. They will have literature courses but I think art history should also involve the history of literature. And, so the writing students will- it's an ideal program for a writing student who is comfortable taking drawing classes and doing some other visual arts work. And the beauty of it, I think, I'm really happy with the way the program's turned out- I tried to make it open-ended, because we don't know where the future of writing is going, and when I write my product looks like, like this, right? It looks like a book, but this isn't the only form writing can take, especially in the world of technology. Some people might write specifically for screens... The way young people- now I'm gonna sound like an old person- they way young people are operating now is they're very accustomed to multiple screens. Doesn't that sound like a nightmare? Multiple screens at once. If you go certain places that are aimed at kids, you might get three giant screens happening all at the same time, and their attention span is such that they can absorb that. I mean, we talk about attention deficit, but they almost have attention overload- I'm not even sure how they, they take it all in, but if you're writing for screens, you might be writing for games, you might be writing for multimedia, you might be writing for video, you might be writing for something that people will be looking at more than one screen at a time, and that's not the way this works. So the program is created in a way that can accommodate this student, who says 'I want to write a novel.' I will love that student deeply, that will be the student that I adore... >> [chuckling] That's my favorite student... >> Yeah. A student who comes in and says 'I want to write poetry,' we have poets working in the program. So we will have, we will accommodate the student who wants to write poetry, but if a student shows up and says 'I want to project sentences on the side of a building. I want to project poems on the side of some place,' we can accommodate that. That's a way of writing, right? That's a relationship to audience and words, it's language-based arts. I'm really interested in the students who are doing projections, lately. Projections create this kind of... I want to call it temporal graffiti. You can project words on a building -- as far as I can tell there are no laws against it. If an officer were to say, hey, you can't project on the side of that building, you just turn off the projector [Jody chuckles] and it's done. Right? It's not like graffiti, there's not damage. >> Right, they don't have to erase it... >> Yeah, it's pretty interesting. And if a student says, 'I want to write scripts, but not for Hollywood, I want to write them for games,' the program is built so we can accommodate that. Does that make sense? It's a very broad definition of writing. >> Yeah, it does, it does. [MUSIC BEGINS TO FADE INTO THE BACKGROUND] >> Well, listen, we're gonna have to wrap it up for now. This is Monica Drake's new book, 'The Stud Book.' Where can people get this? Anywhere? >> Anywhere books are sold, that's right. >> And thank you so much... >> Thank you so much. Thanks. >> She's an excellent writer; this is an excellent book. I'm Jody Seay, this is Back Page; join us again next time as we take another peek at the Back Page, and remember: We're all in this together. More the same than different. Do your best. >> Thank you! [MUSIC CONTINUES]